“Wah!” he laughed until his belly jiggled like a mound of custard one sets down too roughly on the table, “Wah, wah, wah! Is this what turns you on, girlie?” His eyebrows, sparse and grey, established a distinction between his face and forehead, but the transition between his forehead and scalp was impossible to determine, granting him the naive charms of infantile baldness. His stomach was the happy hump of every baby, and his sagging breasts sat upon this hump.

I uncorked the bottle of white wine and dampened his nappy with a minute splash. “Oh, you bad baby boy, you made pee-pee,” I wished to participate in the merriment.

“I paid f’r that there wine, now give it here!” he bellowed unexpectedly, wrenching the bottle from my hand and swallowed the remaining contents without inhaling once. When he had finished, he licked the circumference of his lips and burped without anyone having to pat his droopy back.

I don’t know what came over him, but he crawled around the apartment on all fours and began going through my belongings. When he discovered the severed mattress, a series of hiccups jarred his slouching, grey-haired breasts.

“You made someone pretty damn mad, I’d say. Do you do this here of’en?”

“Make dinner?”

“This here.”

“Dinner is ready.” I turned about neutrally.

How oddly he reacted, babbling stupidities: if I was trying to get even with someone, for something, if this whole thing had to do with some ex of mine or some present-day jerk, then he preferred to leave before anything happened because if someone was going to walk in and see him like that, in a goddamn nappy on the floor, his feet up in the air, I might as well know that he was well-known in Pasqua County, owned the corner store for thirty-two years, worth, thanks to no one but him, its weight in gold, had distributors, clients, and a reputation.

I spoon-fed him his dinner to keep his mouth busy, tomato soup, carrot purée, strawberry mousse. The shopkeeper did not consume any substantial amount, rather he took advantage of his role and spat in my face.

“Never cared for it,” he coughed, “Not even one year out’a my old lady’s legs, I hate rabbit food!”

“Then why do you sell it?”

He let out a second despicable burp and brawled, “So why don’t you change my nappy, Mummy?!” When I didn’t react, he groped for one of my breasts and said, “I’m thirsty! Got anythin’ to suck?”

“That is odd, for you have drunk a whole bottle.”

“Fuck the bottle! Give me the real McCoy!”

With his foot, he knocked the globe off my banana case, put it like a pillow under his bald head and spread his knees so I would attend to his needs. I patted his bottom. The nappy was damp with white wine. I inhaled the alcoholic fumes, how keenly they resembled the smell of urine.

“Don’t waste no time smellin’: suck!” he invited, fumbling to unpin the nappy as fast as he could.